In dreams, affects take shape and form and color. affects are drawn into resonance, the seemingly disparate in waking life are crashed or woven together into intricate, shocking, garish, intimate realness. A key character in dreams, or narratives of dreams, is the setting itself. In my dreams, interior and exteriors blend, neighborhoods in different cities open up to each other, like the impossible geographies of Kafka’s stories. (film credit: “N.Y., N.Y.” Francis Thompson, dir. 1959) Yesterday the New York Times published an Iraq war veteran’s dreams and reflections. Here are some important excerpts: What if it’s not a dream at all? What if I really have the city of Mosul inside of me? Or at least that neighborhood on a sunny morning. Maybe when…
Tagged: Brian Turner, bullet, dreams, Francis Thompson, New York, poetry, violence, war